“I am glad you could sleep,” Mrs. Varian answered, as she stepped
across the threshold and confronted the lovely girl whose heart she was
about to wound so cruelly.
But, somehow, she did not shrink from the task for a change had come
over her feelings toward Cinthia, and she experienced a sort of fierce
pleasure in the task now before her. In a way, it would be taking
revenge on a woman who had wronged Mrs. Varian, and who was dead
now--dead, but unforgiven in her lonely grave.
For this girl, her daughter, how could Mrs. Varian cherish any love?
Perhaps something like pity touched her heart as the large, soft dark
eyes turned upon her so wistfully, but she fought down the sympathy,
saying to herself:
“Her mother had no mercy on me--none! And the same blood runs in
Cinthia’s veins. She could not be trusted to bring her husband anything
but ill.”
She threw back her magnificent head with a haughty motion, and said,
curtly:
“Sit down, Cinthia, for what I am about to tell you may possibly ruffle
your nerves.”
Cinthia obeyed with surprising meekness for one so proud; but the
imperious woman before her had the habit of command, and every one
seemed to obey.
She, too, took a chair, as if perhaps her own nerves were not quite
steady. Then she said:
“Cinthia, you have done wrong in disobeying your father’s commands,
when he told you there were reasons why you should not marry my son.”
Cinthia bowed without answering. She had no defense to make, only the
mute protest of her wistful eyes.
“I am here to tell you,” continued Mrs. Varian, “that on my side there
exist as grave reasons as your father’s for protesting against your
marrying Arthur.”
The blood rose in the girl’s face, mounted to her fair brow, and
receded, leaving her pale as death, her eyes beginning to flash with
pride. She essayed to speak, and faltered:
“Arthur told me--that you--were pleased--with our engagement. I--I--did
not think it mattered much--disobeying a cold, unloving father who has
neglected me all my life. If he had been fond of me, kind to me, I
would have acted differently.”
A strange gleam shot into the brilliant eyes of Mrs. Varian, almost as
if it pleased her to know that Everard Dawn had been cold and cruel to
his only daughter. Then she looked down and played with the diamonds
that flashed on her white hands, as she continued, gravely:
“Arthur and I have talked matters over together--there are things we
would rather not confide to you, best for you not to hear--and we have
decided that your father is right. You can never be Arthur’s wife.”
Perhaps Cinthia had expected something like this, but it struck her
with the force of a great shock. She began to tremble like a leaf in a
gale, crying out:
“You do not mean that he--Arthur--rejects me--after bringing me away
from my father’s home to marry me--jilts me at the very altar!”
It was piteous, that heartcry wrung from the profoundest depths of
feeling, and for a moment Mrs. Varian was silent, sympathetic. Then she
looked down again at her rings, and answered:
“I beg that you will not blame Arthur; he is the soul of honor; but in
this matter he has no choice save to give back your promise.”
“He sent you to tell me this? Why was he not brave enough to come
himself?”
“He believed it was better not to see you again,” the lady answered;
and Cinthia gasped in a sort of terror.
Not to see him again--her Arthur, her love, her king, who was just
now to have been her happy bridegroom! Why, this was too terrible to
believe! Parted in an hour, torn asunder at the altar by the cruelty of
those cold hearts that age and time had taught forgetfulness of love.
Why, this was too hard to bear!
It seemed to her that she was swooning, dying; the same sick feeling
came to her that she had felt last night, when her father’s voice
shouted to them in the blackness of the night; but a sudden hope, a
lightning suspicion, restored her fainting senses, and she sat erect
again.
“I--I--” she began incoherently. “Oh, Mrs. Varian, it would
break my heart to believe the cruel thing you have just said! My
Arthur--_mine_--who was to be my husband--to turn against me all in one
moment, to wish never to see me again! You are deceiving me. I will not
believe such an impossible story save from his own lips.”
With that passionate defiance she lay back pale and panting, gazing
with half-shut eyes at her tormentor.
“Is it so?” said Mrs. Varian. “Then you shall be satisfied. It was
only to spare you and Arthur pain. But perhaps it will please you to
hear that he suffers as much as you do over this pang of parting.”
There came to her the first intimation of an unsuspected nobility in
the girl’s nature when Cinthia uttered, drearily:
“It would be cruel--nay, wicked--in me to wish any one to feel the
agony of soul that is my portion.”
“Yet Arthur shares it with you, child, to the deepest, bitterest dregs.
Come with me, and see.”
She took Cinthia’s cold, unresisting hand, and led her along the
corridor; continuing in an explanatory manner:
“He should have come to you, but the shock of his broken love dream
almost stretched him dead at my feet. I had to call in a physician, but
he is better now.”
She pushed open a door, and led Cinthia in. She saw Arthur lying on a
lounge, with a ghastly face and closed eyes.
“Are you asleep, my son? because, after all, it will be better for you
to tell Cinthia yourself. She can not believe me.”
He started and opened his dark-blue eyes. When they fell on the placid
sorrowful face of his lost little love, the burning tears sparkled into
them and rolled down upon his cheeks. Years of anguish could not have
changed him more than this keen stroke of an hour ago.
“Cinthia”--he breathed hollowly, and she came and bent over him,
impulsively slipping her little hand into his as he went on--“Cinthia,
do not think me false or fickle, or turned against you by the arbitrary
wishes of our parents. I never loved you better than in this hour when
I must part from you forever. Cinthia, it is the most fortunate thing
in the world that my mother chanced on us in time to prevent our mad
marriage. A great gulf is fixed between us that neither our love nor
our hopes can ever cross. My mother has telegraphed for your father to
come and take you home, and we must bid each other an eternal farewell.”
Cinthia felt herself sinking, falling; but an arm slipped round her
waist, and Mrs. Varian, with a sigh, pillowed the unconscious head
against her breast.